


soft crux

by meclea



Category: Jade Empire
Genre: Chapter 3 Spoilers, F/M, Light Angst, Not Beta Read - Please notify me of any grammar/spelling problems, Porn with Feelings, more angst than porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 19:17:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12464169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meclea/pseuds/meclea
Summary: He knew the sphere of their physicality in the context of combat. The difference between the battlefield and the bed came down to the methods of bringing the other to their knees.





	soft crux

She was so young. Gods, she was so _young_. She was mature in spirit, had no shortage of dignity and composure, and held in her heart a wisdom beyond her years. But none of that could replace the experience gained from age. She wore the dark and rough jiasha of the Lotus Acolytes, but she did not have their skulking gait, or their preternatural tendency to look over their shoulders. She walked tall, hips swaying brazenly. Her expression was appropriately as distrustful as all of the other Acolytes, but belied a pride that the Lotus Assassins would relish searing out of her―that they _would_ sear out of her, if given the time to do so.

They would not have the time. This was an infiltration. Jen Zi would be in and back out within a matter of weeks, not months. Zu would make sure of it.

Jen Zi walked the Way of the Open Palm with a serene certainty that Zu had not seen the likes of in a long time. But the Lotus Assassins had a penchant for sullying such mindsets. Zu did not doubt for a second that they would spoil her purity if she became too entrenched in their mire. Indeed, he had seen the way her eyes would linger for a moment on lone assassins that could be killed without witnesses. He had seen how she had drawn out training sessions of which she could incite fatal "accidents" if need be.

If Jen Zi wished to get out of the Lotus Assassin hideout faster in order to preserve her morality, she would have to commit low path acts, which would bring her closer to the Way of the Closed Fist. If she refrained from doing such crimes to avoid dissonance with the Way of the Open Palm, she would have to remain in the hideout for longer, where the mindset of the Closed Fist would have more time to seep into her thoughts and actions, and she would still be dragged down from the high path.

The Lotus Assassins were poison.

The Way of the Closed Fist was fitting for some people. Zu himself would not have been able to do the things he needed to if he had been on the high path. Even Jen Zi, Zu thought, would benefit far more in her journey if she had been walking the low path. But she had made her stance abundantly clear, had argued against all of Zu's more "efficient" teachings with acts of compassion that often went unrewarded. After all this time, Zu had come to harbor a great respect for her preserverance to her moral code, even if he did not agree with it. He would not let the Lotus Assassins stain her spirit with their evil.

And if he harbored something else besides respect for her.... That was something that had no place in this complicated journey. There was too much at stake. He was too damaged, and she had too many responsibilities to divert her attention from.

It was with these thoughts in mind that he approached her. She had been preparing for sleep, as much as it could be called such; in the lair of Lotus Assassins, it was necessary to adhere to the proverbial "sleep with one eye open" method. This was especially true for Acolytes.

In the world above, it was high noon, Zu knew. But down here, in this sepulcher of dark and rot, it was always night. Jen Zi had been keeping an unnatural sleep schedule for months now and was none the wiser.

"So now you come," Jen Zi said shortly. He had not yet emerged from the shadows, but she was becoming familiar enough with them to know when something moved in their clutches. "It's amusing how you are free to come and go as you please, but you choose to linger without actually helping my cause." She lit a very small candle on the rock floor. The light was dim and would be near useless for those whose eyes had not acclimated to darkness.

Zu frowned. He checked once more that there were no other Lotus Assassins to witness their rendevous before stepping out into the dim light cast by a candle. "You know I am here to help you. Do not cast your bitterness on me now, after all we've faced."

"We?" she snapped. "I have faced many hardships throughout this quest. What have you faced beyond a few ghosts and Sky's ire? What have you done while I blacken my hands with the evil that permeates this pustule?" She turned to the stone wall, raised her fist as if to smash it―and Zu had no doubt that she could, with only a fraction of the strength coiled into the small space of her body―but then stopped. She turned back to him, looking horrified. "Zu, I'm...I did not mean that. This place, it...."

Zu knew all too well. "It infects the soul," he offered. "And I...have not been the most trustworthy companion to you on this journey. Your anger is not entirely misplaced, although it will not help being angry at me in this situation."

Voice horse, Jen Zi said, "I do trust you. I have never doubted you, not once. Not truly." She stepped closer to him, eyes finding his through the dark. The earnestness he saw there was jarring. He did not think he would ever get used to it.

"I am unworthy of such trust," he said. "But we do not have the luxury of questioning allies, however tenuous your belief in them might be. I am here to remind you that your time is running short, Jen Zi. Your spirit is becoming fragmented under the ways of the Lotus Assassins. If you wish to come back above as the same person you were when you went below, you need to complete your mission soon. You're running out of time."

"I know," she said. "I feel it in me. It is challenging to follow the Way of the Open Palm in this place." Her hand shakes as she brings it up to brace herself on the wall. "Sometimes I forget the reason I'm here to begin with. All I can focus on is my role as a Lotus Assassin. How to win using their rules. How to become more powerful than the ones who look down on me. Master Li has never seemed so far away.

"I've forgotten the warmth of the sun. Isn't that funny? For all of my life, I've taken it for granted. I can't help but wonder if I'll ever see it again, or if I'll ever feel it. I don't remember what Wild Flower's laugh sounds like." If Zu were any less disciplined, he would have flinched in surprise when Jen Zi's hand snapped out to grip his bare arm, the softness of her skin belying the vice beneath it. "I've almost forgotten what another's skin feels like." Her breath shook as it fell out. "Please, just let me...."

She didn't move. She waited for his permission, he realized. And...well. They had been dancing around something for a while, something he would not put a name to, but this plea for contact seemed to derive from need, not want. Neither of them were tactile people. Their touches before now were accidental or clinical, albeit lingering, if anyone cared to admit it. Zu did not.

Relaxing was his implicit permission. She moved closer, her footsteps lacking sound―a Lotus Assassin skill, useful but not suited for someone who had no fear of making herself known. Zu wanted to burn such underhanded tricks out of her, to cleanse her of their taint. Her hand slid up to his bared shoulder, running over the corrugated scars with a slow thoroughness that made something chaotic trash against his composure. It was unfamiliar. It was also able to be ignored. Her hand settled under his collar bone, just to the left of the jade adder on his chest. He felt the trail of her fingers of her other hand on his cheek. They traced the scar there down across his face, following it down to where it cut his lip. The skin was so sensitive there, untouched by others and tender around the scar tissue.

"Zu," she said. That was all she needed to say. Coupled with the purposeful touches, he was powerless to the candor in her voice.

It was a choice to kiss her. He weighed his desires against rationality, and rationality won by landslides, but he deliberately kissed her anyways. She yielded easily, completely, devoid of any of the cold she had met him with earlier, and it only fostered his sense of urgency. This―whatever _this_ was―had been culminating for months. If something was going to happen, it was going to happen here and now, in the reeking gut of the Lotus Assassins' hive.

Under his hands, the fabric of her Acolyte jiasha felt rough and scratchy. He wondered what here red and blue silk kimono would feel like under his palms, how easily it would fall open for him were he to untie the blue sash keeping it closed. He fisted the robe at her hips, pulling her closer, and she went easily, molding to his touch. She pulled on the cord around his own shaolin robes. And―

This was―

" _Jen Zi_."

He grabbed her hands and shoved them roughly behind her against the wall and above her head. She scowled at him, but he continued. He took a breath to steady himself, to quell the heat simmering under his skin. "You are desperate. This place does things to you. This is not a choice to make lightly. A rash decision like this―"

"Don't patronize me," she hissed, cheeks flushed with the heat of embarrassment or arousal. "We've been skirting this―this _thing_ since Tien's Landing. If you do not want this, then say it, but don't tell me it's because you believe you know what's best for me."

Distantly, he noted that Jen Zi could probably kill him. No, he was certain that she could kill him if she wanted to. There were powers within her that he could not even begin to fathom. She chose to let him hold her here, probably for his own sake, to give him an illusion of control. For some reason, that comforted him.

"I do want this," he said.

She twisted her wrists out of his hold and pushed him down to lie prone on the cot. The aggression set his blood aflame, wanting to meet her challenge head-on, but was struck dumb as she swiftly untied the sash around her waist and slid out of the jiasha. The cloth unveiled not voluptuous valleys of unblemished skin, but a chest mottled with combat, wrapped in a binder. Lower, the cloth dragged down hips and thighs that grounded her more sturdily than any roots, then to knees scraped by catching falls, but never by the act of grovelling.

Beautiful in the way that tigers were beautiful, and just as deadly, a woman like her would certainly enrapture any poet or artist that laid eyes on her. "Strip," she said as her clever fingers began to pluck apart the binder. He had thought this would be awkward: the steady eye contact, the lack of words, this intense moment. But his hands did not shake when they unclasped his shaolin robe. He felt no shame in shucking it off his body, or in watching her do the same with her own clothes. He knew the sphere of their physicality in the context of combat. The difference between the battlefield and the bed came down to the methods of bringing the other to their knees.

It was an act more recognizable than he had expected. It did not make it right, or safe. There could be a Lotus Assassin lurking right outside the door, and Zu would have no inkling. No, no―if they were going to do this, they would do it as properly as the situation would allow them, because it could be the only chance they got to consummate this...whatever this was. For now, there were no Lotus Assassins. There were no Master Lis, or Black Hands, or spirits that would not pass on to the afterlife.

There was Zu, and there was Jen Zi.

She stretched her naked body over his own, and he accepted her with a firm grip on her waist. She kissed him, plush lips enticing his into movement. The tip of her tongue traced the scar marring his mouth, startling a groan out of him. His hands slid down to grope her rear, then to stretch her thighs farther apart around him. At this angle, he could reach under her to slide his fingers through the slick of her sex, a slow drag that teased more than fulfilled. The resulting whimper was the most delicate noise he had ever heard from her, and he sought it out again, pressing just slightly harder, and her breaths were shaky but he could not coax out a repeat of that vulnerable sound. Not like this, at least.

He pushed one finger into her. She hissed and after a second rolled her hips back to meet him. He endeavored to open her up gently to convey the reverence he felt for her, but she nipped at his chin and said, "I won't break. More."

"I know you won't. But I want to be thorough. Give me time." Nonetheless, he nudged another finger in along with the second, twisting them in a motion that made her stomach clench.

"This is not a place in which we have the luxury of taking our time," Jen Zi panted.

It was true and he hated to acknowledge it. "As you wish."

It was so easy to slide into her, like her body was a vice tailored to fit his girth and length. Jen Zi sat fully impaled on his cock, her head thrown back  
and mouth dropped open in a silent moan. He could feel her toes curling against the outside of his thighs. The heat and wet of her made his vision swim for a few moments, his fingernails digging into the skin stretched over her hips. He rose, setting kisses across her chest, licking over a nipple and then biting into the flesh right above it. The noise she made was so close to that whimper he wanted, but close-mouthed.

After a few delicious undulations of her hips, she rose a few inches and sunk back down, a smooth, slick friction. Another lift and drop, and another, and she was riding him for all he was worth. He sought out her mouth, but the overwhelming pleasure took too much focus to put effort into a coordinated kiss, and they ended up breathing hotly into each others' mouths. She was feral, was beautiful, was tight and hot and wet, and whether she knew it or not, he was her slave. He brought a hand up to palm her breast while the other grabbed one of her ass cheeks and squeezed.

"Please," she whispered. She didn't specify what she was asking for, but Zu pulled her back down on top of him, gripped the top of her thighs with both hands, planted his feet, and thrusted. Her quiet whine was all the affirmation he needed to keep going, to relentlessly plow into the clench of her body, chasing his pleasure and hers. It was decadent, being sheathed in her like this. He would have been satisfied worshiping her with his hands and his mouth, only focused on her satisfaction, but she allowed him to take her like this. It was a gift.

"Close," she said, her hands clawing into his chest. "Zu, Zu, I'm so―just a little more―"

He doubled his efforts, pounding into her with the same dedication and focus that he put into combat. She bit down on his shoulder and came in a tide of shaking muscles and a series of rippling clenches over his cock. The invitation was too much, too good. With a grunt, he followed her over the edge. He rode it out, his thrusting becoming soft rolls that eventually stilled. She slumped over him. If she disapproved of him coming in her, she did not voice so.

He wondered if she was taking any medicine to prevent conception. Then he, against his better judgement, decided that it was a problem that could be dealt with when they weren't facing a journey that very likely ended in death for at least some of her companions. He knew he was taking an irresponsible approach to this, but this whole encounter had been nothing if not irresponsible. In for a silver, in for a gold, as the saying went.

He cupped the oval of her face with his hand and traced her eyebrow with his thumb. She looked up at him, smiled, pushed her face more firmly into his hand. Then she closed her eyes and nipped his palm, a gentle reminder of her ferocity, no matter how docile she might have seemed then. His heart thudded loud enough that he wondered if she could feel it through their skin. The air was thick and warm around them. Jen Zi was an enticing weight over his torso and legs.

But as much as he wanted to stay here and bask in the hazy post-coital peace, it would be a grave mistake to linger. "I cannot stay," he told her.

"No," she quietly sighed. Her juts and edges had been smoothed over in the wake of their coupling. The moue of her face was framed by sweat-slick hair, and was softened by the hint of flush that still clung to her cheeks, echoes of the pleasure they had shared. He thought of other ways that he could bring her to this state again, what he could do to worship her body with his own. But more than that, he wanted to stay with her, now, in this moment.

He wanted to stay like he had wanted few things before.

He shifted her off of him and stood up. He gathered his clothes again, but slowly, dragging this parting out longer than appropriate. He felt Jen Zi's gaze on his back, eyes tracing the scars that her fingers now knew. She was sitting up when he turned around again, her hair spilling out in inky black tendrils, hands clutching her own Acolyte robe to her chest. Everything in this gods-forsaken lair was stained with shadows, but the gray-scale of Jen Zi was of softer shades. Its dark was a comforting one, something warm and soothing, at odds with the starkened and stifling black of everything else. If he had any less restraint, he would crawl to her and wrap himself up in all of the shades that made up the chiaroscuro of Jen Zi.

"I _would_ have you stay," she said, misinterpreting his staring as deliberation.

"Not this time," he said.

"That implies that there will be a next time." She froze, as though scared to move. "I...would like there to be a next time."

He swallowed thickly. "As would I." The tension flooded from her body all at once, and a smile, titularly radiant, swept across her face. He wished to say more. Under normal circumstances, he would. But all of his words had been drained out of him, hallowing out space for an emotion he refused to scrutinize. Now was not the time, and certainly not the place.

One of his staff-calloused, blade-scarred hands landed on the arch of her neck as he leaned down over her to press his forehead to hers. Noses bumping, breath intermingling, he paused to take this moment in. He was expending too much time now; privacy was not something Acolytes were privy to, and surely their favor with fortune would run out soon, if it had not already. Heads still pressed together, he lifted his adder stone necklace, and he transposed its black cord from around his neck to her own.

"I want to give this to you," he said, pulling away to look closer. The jade settled between where the swell of her breasts began. The green was beautiful against her coloring, and even the roughness of the black cord made her juxtaposed skin seem smoother, softer. A masculine pride filled him to see something of his upon her, like a claim of ownership, but even more like a ward of protection. He ran his fingertips over the pendant and her chest, a slow drag of touch, and her resulting shiver and hardened nipples churned satisfaction in his gut. But the time for indulgence was over. "It would please me to see you wear it, and know that I have been here, on you, in you." At her stuttered breath, his eyes flicked up from the adder stone to hone in on her own. "It is also a promise to be here again, if you would have me."

"Of course," she whispered, and pulled him down farther to slot her lips against his. He yielded to the kiss for a moment, before pulling away. The way her mouth followed his as far as possible was almost enough to draw him back in, but truly, it was past the time for his restraint to return, and he would have to have enough of it for both of them.

"Not this time," he repeated for both his and her sakes.

"Next time," she said.

Yes, next time, he thought as he slipped back into the shadows.


End file.
